Akame ga Kill! Ep. 2: I caught a tuna in Reno just to watch a man die

Damn, what a touching, solemn moment. It’d be a shame if we were to ruin it with some comedy hijinks…

Oh, would you look that? Boobs! I guess we simply have another Akame ga Kill! episode on our hands. Well, seeing as how we’re not off to a very hot start, you guys know the drill…

— Leone takes Tatsumi to meet the rest of the Night Raid members, and one of them even goes, “You’re still undecided about joining?” Yeah, why would you not want to become a deadly assassin? It’s so easy! You just take the pointy end and stick it in the other person!

— Right now, Tatsumi’s in a discussion with a blonde with big boobs and a megannekko. Yes, these two ladies are deadly members of Night Raid, a group of assassins hellbent on cleansing the world of corruption. You know you can’t really take the story seriously when this is what the characters look like. Meanwhile, Tatsumi and his nice, plush office attire is looking to join the party…

— Oh goody, a twin-tailed tsunderekko shows up, and she goes, “You don’t seem like you’d be able to fight with us professionals at all…” Yeah, the emphasis is mine.

— Oh, okay:

In case you’re wondering, that’s the Shredder-looking dude from last week’s episode. We then meet Lubbock, who’s attempting to sneak a peek at Leone while she’s bathing. Ah, aren’t these guys just a lovable bunch?

— Next, we meet Akame again. I like how she’s eating from this gigantic bird-thing — and I like how it isn’t just any bird but an EVIL-BIRD — but she can nevertheless find reasonably-sized drumsticks on it. That’s just the magic of Night Raid, y’see. Forget all the “killing the rich and powerful” part. It’s all about the exotic cuisine.

— Last but not least, there’s Najenda, a.k.a. Night Raid’s boss. But despite being Night Raid’s boss, she doesn’t even know who Tatsumi is. Basically, the head assassin has no idea who’s about to join her ranks. That’s… that’s reassuring…

— Tatsumi is essentially trapped. If he doesn’t join Night Raid, he can’t exactly go free either. Isn’t it nice that he got dragged into this whole situation?

— The conversation then goes like this:

How do I know you guys will help places like my village out?

Don’t worry! We’ll just kill the prime minister and install a new government?

Will this be a benevolent government?

Uh, of course!

Oh, okay!

— I like how they still try to have it both ways. Yeah, we’re killing child rapists, murderers, and sadistic torturers… but whoa whoa whoa, we’re dark, evil murderers, okay?! This ain’t justice! THIS IS METAL!!! C’mon… yeah, you may be killing people, but you’re still the good guys. Not only that, you’re only killing the bad guys. Ergo, you guys are upholding justice albeit in a very black-and-white way.

— In the end, Tatsumi isn’t deterred. He joins Night Raid rather enthusiastically too, I must add. As a reward, Akame is free to kill him if he ever becomes a burden. Gee, that’s nice. I mean, if he hadn’t joined them, they would’ve put him to work in some sort of non-combat role… y’know, here at their base of operations. So if it turns out Tatsumi’s a burden in the field, why not just reassign him? NO, WE’RE METAL. WE SHOW NO MERCY. WE KILL YOU IF YOU SUCK. Geez, fine, fine…

— Day after day, Tatsumi finds himself stuck in the kitchen. It’s all part of the training, y’see. Meanwhile, Mine continues to taunt him. Let’s see… if I consider who this anime is supposed to appeal to, then I can only imagine that Mine secretly likes him. Y’know how schoolchildren treat their crushes poorly? Yeah, that’s probably it.

— Let’s just skip ahead to the action. There’s some stupid scene where Tatsumi learns to mask his presence in order to catch tuna, but it’s pretty short and pointless. In any case, Night Raid is now after an oil merchant and some swordsman named Ogre. They’ve been committing crimes and framing innocent people. The client’s fiance got all mixed up in this, so she now requests Night Raid’s assistance.

All of a sudden, however, the anime gets all dark and heavy on us: “She probably sold her body many times to earn this.” It’s not even something Leone’s been told. She just somehow senses it, i.e. we need to ramp up the sense of tragedy in our story, so let’s just say this girl’s a prostitute!

— Our hapless hero pretty much volunteers himself for the job of slaying Ogre even though he’s hardly done any actual combat training.

— On their way to get the job done, we end up learning Akame’s backstory from Leone, but it’s just exposition. So far, this episode has been dreadfully low on action.

— Needless to say, the evil oil merchant goes down easily enough, so we still have no action. But no worries! Tatsumi’s about to slay the Ogre!

— So the fight between our hero and his target is underway, but they fucking talk too much. The Ogre is just going on and on about how he’s going to target Tatsumi’s client. And sure enough, all that talking enrages our hero. As a result, Tatsumi hacks the Ogre’s arms off, then twirls in midair in slow motion as he pontificates on the nature of these evil, evil people. It’s so fucking ridiculous. But hey, hacked limbs and gallons of blood everywhere!

That means that we’re watching a good anime!

— I mean, it’s nice that our hero isn’t a weakling, but man, he doesn’t even need any training. It’s his very first mission ever as an assassin, and he’s all smiles and shit. Naw, y’see, he could only pull it off because he’s been cooking and, uh, catching tuna. The art of assassination is very similar to catching tuna. And, uh, cooking is like… communication and shit even though this was a solo job so there was no one to communicate with… IT HELPED, OKAY?! And when you add all of that up, that’s why Tatsumi was able to kill a battle-hardened veteran without sustaining an injury!

13 thoughts on “Akame ga Kill! Ep. 2: I caught a tuna in Reno just to watch a man die”

I’m glad you’re blogging this show. Seeing someone give legitimate reasons to back up their opinions on this show, instead of just saying something like, “It’s awesome because it’s awesome!” is refreshing. I really don’t like the whole comedy thing this show is trying to pull off. You probably don’t remember how annoyed I was with the humor in Noragami, well that was George Carlin compared to this show. It’s a big mess. This episode doesn’t even have enough violence and blood to make up for the poor writing. I still wonder what everyone sees in this show to like as much as they say they do.

And I love how the anime just glosses over how while Night Raid are supposed to be the good guys, their prices for helping the poor are so high their clients are forced resort to prostitution or similar to pay them. But somehow they are on the side of the poor and weak. Right.

“He isn’t denying it!” Ouch. I cringed my face numb.
Well, at very least it isn’t too boring. Finding out new ways to fuck up any weight the story has going for it is fairly amusing to watch. Likely not for 24 episodes, but for now at least.

The main character was already a skilled warrior to begin with. The only character he said was stronger than him is Akame. I am guessing with her years of training Akame is the strongest member can’t see the boss recruiting some one in a fight if she could have killed them.

It’s also a copout. TatsumI is already op, so you can come up with any backstory you want, no matter how pathetic and weak you make him start off, he’ll still end up being the strongest character in the show. There’s no tension and akame is too boring to trust that she’ll actually be a threat to him.

I admit I enjoyed the pilot. Some silly lapses in logic but the comedy was a big factor so it could be hand waved, pacing excusing some of the rest (barring the tiniest gigantic capital in the world how all these people meet up). But this episode…no. Nope, sorry. I think the clincher was the mission assignments. I said, “Oh, Tatsumi will be accompanying the dog girl while she takes out the general, at least they’re trying to make-WAIT A MINUTE!” That was a low-blow, show.

It’s basically the new Elfen Lied. I can’t understand why that was rather popular either. As far as shounen goes, Akame ga Kill! aims squarely at the target audience with matching interpretations of style and cool for that age.

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